Twelve recommendations developed by the Housing Affordability Taskforce were adopted by the Sunshine Coast Council today.

Sunshine Coast Council’s Social Policy Portfolio holder and Housing Affordability Taskforce Chair, Cr Anna Grosskreutz said that this is fantastic news for renters and new home buyers across the Sunshine Coast.

“Today council fully supported the hard work the taskforce has put in during the last 12 months,” Cr Grosskreutz said.

“Over the past year, the taskforce has improved the knowledge and understanding of housing issues, built relationships between housing sectors, gained industry involvement to develop solutions and raised the profile of the Sunshine Coast region at state and federal levels.

“These initiatives will boost the supply of affordable and appropriate housing to Sunshine Coast residents by fast tracking affordable housing development applications, investigating share accommodation and developing an affordable housing support policy.”

Cr Grosskreutz said that the taskforce will now work towards making the recommendations a reality.

“The next step is to form workings groups and develop an implementation and resourcing plan for the key recommendations,” Cr Grosskreutz said.

Members of the taskforce will travel to Sydney and Melbourne to participate in a study tour to understand and learn from other innovative techniques and examples used by other local governments and private enterprise to tackle housing affordability.

The taskforce also has three vacancies that will be filled through a public nomination process.

“The skills of the existing members will be asses and gaps in experience and knowledge will be targeted in the selection process,” Cr Grosskreutz said.

“We want to make sure that we’ve covered all the knowledge basis.”

Council congratulated Cr Grosskreutz and the taskforce on their significant achievements of the past 12 months.